You are fortunate in your experience of the Catholic church Joe, mine was considerably darker. It didn't include sexual abuse, just physical abuse, injustice and humiliation. It also was not mainly delivered by the clergy but by lay teachers some of whom clearly enjoyed their cruelty - only they can judge what the nature of their pleasure was but some of them did get remarkably red faced. But it was done at a school in England run by the De La Salle brothers and they took an active part in the violence.

Most of the time I just get on with what has been till now a very happy life but every few years I find that something crops up that brings the abuse back causing me psychological problems that I have to work through. The most damaged people I have met are the ones who say it never did them any harm.

But I know many kind and good Catholics. The organisation is closed to me because it makes me feel very uncomfortable but this has been positive because it has made me look elsewhere for spirituality.

Part of that journey has been the realisation that it is not so much the religion you have that matters as the way you put it into practice. The Christian god is traditionally one of authority as well as love. The problem is that it is easy to delegate authority but you can't delegate love; that has to be discovered anew by every individual and many Catholics use their religion as an inspiration to do just that.

By the way Joe, I think you're a really nice bloke but you might be a heretic! :)